More failures and more realistic failures

Could we please have some more real life delays pop up. The same few delays get boring and it would be good to get a bit more variety.

Incidents such as drivers reporting trespass. Could either do the gsmr emergency button stopping all trains and as signallers, we have to manually approve trains to get moving again. The other potential outcome is that we can stop certain trains and then manually caution them through the area. This only affects a small number of trains but of course needs a bit more monitoring closely by us over the next 10 minutes or so to try and ensure the lines are safe.
Ideally, if a track is 4 tracked for example, the incident should affect all lines.

Other such interesting instances would be train crew being late for passenger services. Unless timetable writers want to go really, really in depth to work out crew diagrams, the 'crew change' thing it pretty much exclusively used for freight trains. Could something be looked at for some stations where it is known that crew change over, for there to be delays. Such as TFW trains at Chester, Northern trains at Manchester Oxford Road. Of course it wont go as in depth as which services change over at which stations but the basic premise of crew being delayed, even when starting from a station so like Manchester Piccadilly, trains may be delayed leaving due to awaiting staff.
Of course this should be limited as you're not going to have trains awaiting crew if starting service at Warrington Bank Quay for example as staff there 99% of the time stay on the train and work it back so almost no crew changes. Similarly, trains starting Birmingham International shouldn't have any crew changes so it wouldn't trigger.

I am sure that this could be done on a sim by sim basis, maybe even by operator as I know that you do that sometimes like XC being more prone to delays. This could work on the Chester sim for example, only at Chester, with Avanti having some changeovers, Merseyrail having no crew changes. Northern only having them to/from Manchester Piccadilly and TFW having changeovers. On the Manchester Piccadilly Sim, at Piccadilly itself, Avanti changoevers, CrossCountry changeovers, Northern changeovers on services which start/finish in the main shed, TPE changeovers, no TFW changeovers. Also Manchester Oxford Road changeovers for Northern services which stop there.

Adding to this, I ask for more realism with failures. Give us more and better reasons. I've just had a ECS train delayed due to the wrong kind of food trolley being loaded. How unrealistic. How often are food trolley wrongly put onto a train and of them which are, how many cause delays to trains?
At 4:30 on the Piccadilly sim, I was alerted that the 5:11 would run 10 mins late due to passenger disturbance. How many passengers are causing disturbance at 4-5am? Secondly, why would it require 50 minutes to attend to? How many signallers get this much advance notice for this kind of situation?

The delays to trains are good but I would much rather them be a lot more realistic than they currently are.

Something to add to this, sometimes, trains are sent from depots late with loss of power. I mean, would a depot really send a train out with a major fault?! Also, would be nice to have a feature where you can request a replacement unit out of a depot if one is faulty and send the faulty train back.

Could we please have some more real life delays pop up. The same few delays get boring and it would be good to get a bit more variety.

markymark2000 in post 149479 said:

Could we please have some more real life delays pop up. The same few delays get boring and it would be good to get a bit more variety.

I think we need to be careful how far we take this - from my own, first hand experience there are already far, far more delays and failures in a SimSig session even on some of the minimum settings, than occur in real life.

markymark2000 in post 149479 said:

Incidents such as drivers reporting trespass. Could either do the gsmr emergency button stopping all trains and as signallers, we have to manually approve trains to get moving again. The other potential outcome is that we can stop certain trains and then manually caution them through the area. This only affects a small number of trains but of course needs a bit more monitoring closely by us over the next 10 minutes or so to try and ensure the lines are safe.
Ideally, if a track is 4 tracked for example, the incident should affect all lines.

1) I don't feel that SimSig should be natively simulating emergency situations.
2) All-stop emergency radio broadcasts are a very modern invention; and would not at all be appropriate in any period pre-90s, and also may or may not be remotely like anything the various international sims have.
3) With due respect, I doubt the majority of casual SimSig players would know how to appropriately handle emergency situations.

markymark2000 in post 149479 said:

Other such interesting instances would be train crew being late for passenger services. Unless timetable writers want to go really, really in depth to work out crew diagrams, the 'crew change' thing it pretty much exclusively used for freight trains. Could something be looked at for some stations where it is known that crew change over, for there to be delays. Such as TFW trains at Chester, Northern trains at Manchester Oxford Road. Of course it wont go as in depth as which services change over at which stations but the basic premise of crew being delayed, even when starting from a station so like Manchester Piccadilly, trains may be delayed leaving due to awaiting staff.
Of course this should be limited as you're not going to have trains awaiting crew if starting service at Warrington Bank Quay for example as staff there 99% of the time stay on the train and work it back so almost no crew changes. Similarly, trains starting Birmingham International shouldn't have any crew changes so it wouldn't trigger.

I am sure that this could be done on a sim by sim basis, maybe even by operator as I know that you do that sometimes like XC being more prone to delays. This could work on the Chester sim for example, only at Chester, with Avanti having some changeovers, Merseyrail having no crew changes. Northern only having them to/from Manchester Piccadilly and TFW having changeovers. On the Manchester Piccadilly Sim, at Piccadilly itself, Avanti changoevers, CrossCountry changeovers, Northern changeovers on services which start/finish in the main shed, TPE changeovers, no TFW changeovers. Also Manchester Oxford Road changeovers for Northern services which stop there.

The problem with all of this is two-fold. One it runs up against the same barrier you already allude to - the information isn't out there. If it was and worth the work it would already be in timetables. The second is it's very time sensitive. You assert that Birmingham International shouldn't have any crew changes, and it doesn't in the present day; but it did when XC did loco changes there. Operators, and their crew changeover points are very, very fluid.

The timing of delay notifications has been discussed before, I can't recall the mantis ticket number but it is on the radar; albeit not that high a priority. It boils down to the train decides whether it will or will not be delayed, and by how much when it arrives at a location - so if it arrives 4 hours before it departs then you're going to get 4 hours notice. But the system has to work in all cases and at present that is the least-worst way of doing it.

With regard to delay reasons not being sensible, they've always been regarded as somewhat tongue in cheek (similar to a herd of cows waiting to use a UWC in the middle of london) rather than being 100% accurate as the sim selects a reason at random from a list.

As others have said, yes, many of the reasons are tongue-in-cheek and meant for fun.

Nevertheless, since we last discussed the merits of the wrong type of food trolley, we do have more information available in timetables now. I have raised a ticket (Mantis 37355) to consider what can be done to expand the reasons to a certain degree, and apply them more specifically to train types.

I get some things being a bit fun and interesting but the food trolley one grinds my gears really as it's too often, applies to too many of the wrong trains and delays them too much. It's nonsensical.

I think there's a lot here. Some of it is about policy decisions; some is just the complications of making it work.

I guess you're aware there's a policy of not having problems that replicate real-life potential traumas? So there'll never be a fatality, nor a level crossing collision, to name just 2 possible nasties. Users who work for the railway in real life may well get those sort of things at work and suffer accordingly, the Boss (and personally I'm with him all the way) reckons Simsig should definitely not replicate that situation. Trespassers are perhaps an edge case, but I would come out against that appearing in Simsig for precisely this reason. I recall, when I was on the job, being called out to trespassers from time to time and wondering just what I'd find when I got there. No thank you!

Worth remembering some of the layouts and timetables go back to the days before GSM-R, when the best you had for an emergency was the emergency replacement and you couldn't even call back to a signal post telephone - you just had to wait for the driver to ring in. (Even worse, if you had a queue of trains, if you told a driver to ring back they'd then come in at the back of a queue and you'd need to speak to the drivers of all the trains waiting behind them before you got around to them a second time.) Folk these days don't know they're born. [/Monty Python]

Several of the delay excuses are tongue-in-cheek, partly because this is - again - meant to be something folk enjoy in their spare time. Wrong food trolley on a set of cars is worth a smile (any food trolley at all on a passenger working would sometimes be a welcome change). Quite apart from the flock of geese at a level crossing in the middle of a city. (Freemen of the City of London have a right to drive their flock of sheep across London Bridge, so why not?) Passenger disturbance is the nearest thing I've seen to real life (though I have to say I never saw any real-life passenger disturbances; even football hooligans had begun to behave by the time I was around).

Way back in the day I did occasionally wonder about a way of creating a train failure and having to get an assisting engine out to it, plus getting a fresh set of stock to take up its diagram and all the rest of it. (There's my 1980s railwaying again...) I'm sure Geoff and Clive don't need reminding about my witterings on that subject! But in the end, I suspect it would be just too complicated to set it all up and make it work. Unless the core code has advanced sufficiently to make it viable... but then who's going to program it all? I suspect the devs have more than enough on their plates.

My 2p worth... I'm sure there's other views.

markymark2000 in post 149503 said:

I get some things being a bit fun and interesting but the food trolley one grinds my gears really as it's too often, applies to too many of the wrong trains and delays them too much. It's nonsensical.

Yes, that is the joke. It's meant to be nonsensical!

Way back in the day I did occasionally wonder about a way of creating a train failure and having to get an assisting engine out to it, plus getting a fresh set of stock to take up its diagram and all the rest of it.

GeoffM in post 149504 said:

markymark2000 in post 149503 said:

I get some things being a bit fun and interesting but the food trolley one grinds my gears really as it's too often, applies to too many of the wrong trains and delays them too much. It's nonsensical.

Yes, that is the joke. It's meant to be nonsensical!

Another one I like is a passenger disturbance on a freight train making a regulating stop in the middle of nowhere.

Seriously though, and on a similar note, I have often wondered about a better way of simulating track / signal / points failures. Presumably there is a set number of S&T technicians available in a sim area that can attend a failure, and there must be some time element in them travelling to the next failure to fix it. Not sure of this is possible, but could a failure that is a long way from the previous one take longer to fix, and one that is relatively close be shorter to fix....? For example, last night when operating Bristol, I had 2 points failures literally side by side at one end of Bristol station. I would have imagined that in real life the S&T guys would have fixed both at the same time while they were there, but as they happened some time apart, they were also fixed at some considerable time between each other.

Firstly, I would like to add to the discussion that a few years ago I had a Class 47 reversing on a light loco shunt in Gasworks tunnel immediately outside Kings Cross that rang in to report that it was delayed due to the now infamous wrong food trolley. Quite how the trolley and attendant was supposed to fit in the cab is one thing (as well as the difficulties of transporting the correct food trolley to the loco and removing the offending incorrect one in a dark tunnel), but I'm sure the driver was not short of refreshments on his / her shift that day...... :-)

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